Jacksonville bus shelter flap widens

Three City Council members facing conflict questions

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A split vote on a controversial bus shelter advertising plan a few months ago has come back to haunt the Jacksonville City Council, with two more members now facing questions about possible conflicts of interest.

At least three council members voted without disclosing their working relationships with parties on either side of the hotly contested bus shelter issue.

Earlier this week, the Times-Union reported that council Vice President Jack Webb, an attorney, had been hired by the Jacksonville Transportation Authority to help with collective bargaining issues.

The JTA had pushed the council to change city law to allow the shelter ads, a stance Webb supported in the October vote on the measure, which passed 10-6.

On Wednesday, there were more revelations of potential conflicts:

• Councilman John Crescimbeni is the paid part-time executive director of Scenic Florida, the statewide affiliate of a Jacksonville nonprofit that lobbied against the bus shelter ads. He took that position, too, voting “no” in October.

• Councilman Bill Bishop is a vice president and board member of Scenic Florida. He also voted against the measure.

Council President Richard Clark said he’s concerned that several of his colleagues now appear to have close ties to the parties involved in the bus shelter debate — and voted without making those facts public.

“In the spirit of full disclosure, those are things people want to know,” he said.

Clark said he will ask the General Counsel’s Office to clarify public disclosure rules for council members. He also plans to urge his colleagues to err on the side of caution whenever a business or organization they are personally involved with comes before the council.

“We all have relationships; we all have real jobs; we all have to earn a living,” Clark said. “But we really need to be above reproach here.”

Jacksonville University political science professor Stephen Baker agreed, saying council members should “err on the side of caution” in divulging potential conflicts.

Scenic Jacksonville and Scenic Florida were founded by local attorney Bill Brinton. Their Web sites are hosted by the same company, and Scenic Jacksonville lists Scenic Florida’s office as its mailing address.

Bishop said he joined the Scenic Florida board shortly after he was elected to the City Council in 2007. The position is voluntary, he said.

When Scenic Jacksonville and other nonprofits lobbied against JTA’s efforts to place advertising on bus shelters, Bishop said he saw no need to disclose his leadership role with the state organization

“There is no inconsistency that I happen to be a member of an organization that is opposed to bus shelter advertising and billboards,” Bishop said. “I am personally opposed to bus shelter advertising and billboards.”

Crescimbeni said he cut ties with Scenic Jacksonville shortly before his return to the council in 2008, resigning as an officer and board member.

He acknowledged that the local organization, which began as Citizens Against the Proliferation of Signs in the 1980s, poses a potential conflict of interest because it lobbies the council and has settlement agreements with the city that have required council attention.

“I try to go the extra mile to make sure things don’t even appear to be in the gray area,” he said.

But he has continued to serve as Scenic Florida’s executive director, a position he’s held for six or seven years. He said his salary has varied over the years, from $18,000 in 2008 to $2,660 for work in the first two months of 2009.

Crescimbeni’s duties include serving as an office manager and meeting planner, but he said he also helps citizens around the state push the group’s platform.

Baker, the JU professor, said financial ties are important to disclose, but the public also should know if a council member serves on the board of an organization tied to any proposed legislation.

“It would be better for them to be very explicit about it,” he said.

Jon Phillips, the city’s ethics attorney, said he hasn’t been asked to weigh in on the latest conflict concerns.

Under state law, elected officials have a conflict of interest if the matter before them provides “special private gain or loss” to the elected official, a family member, or entity that he or she is tied to, he said.

“It has to be pretty substantial, and it’s a case-by-case analysis,” Phillips said.

The General Counsel’s Office has already told Webb that he did nothing wrong by voting on the bus shelter bill without disclosing his legal work for JTA because the agency, as a government entity, is exempt from those conflict provisions. Only if the bill had provided a specific and direct benefit to Webb would he have had to recuse himself.

Council members have recused themselves in the past when they weren’t required to, just to ensure an air of transparency.

During Tuesday’s council meeting, Bishop didn’t vote on a bill funding improvements to the Southbank Riverwalk because his architectural firm has a contract tied to the project.

Clark said Councilman Kevin Hyde, an attorney, frequently speaks up when bills involve his firm’s clients.

“Kevin Hyde has recused himself quite often because he doesn’t want to muddy that line,” Clark said. “He knows he’s better off erring on the side of caution.”

Tracey Arpen , a former city attorney who strongly opposed the bus shelter ads, has criticized Webb for not disclosing his business ties with JTA before casting his vote.

At the same time, Arpen defends Crescimbeni and Bishop.

“There is no direct benefit financially or otherwise to that statewide organization [Scenic Florida] as a direct result of the outcome of the vote,” Arpen said.

Unless the council member(s) or their family members stand to financially benefit (substantially) from their vote, there is no need to disclose. It appears that these scenarios did not exist with Council Members Bishop and Crescimbeni. On the other hand, due to his paid employment contract, Council Member Webb did stand to substantially benefit even if he was in technical compliance with the statute that allegedly exempted him from disclosure. Webb represented a client that paid him. Bishop and Crescimbeni were, at most, volunteers of a non-profit organization that took no position on the matter. No honest person could claim these are analogous situations.

Having been following this bill for months in the T-U and Folio Weekly...

1. How is it that an independent agency that does not know how many bus stops it currently maintains--much less how many of those bus stops without a shelter meet the agency's criteria for the construction of a shelter--was able to successfully lobby the City Council to amend the city's sign regulations (and thereby encourage new billboard applications and, if/when such applications are rejected, expensive constitutional litigation) so that a billboard company may construct bus shelters with advertisements? Without knowing how many bus stops meet its criteria for the construction of a new shelter--i.e, in failing to demonstrate, beyond anecdote, that there is a need for new bus shelters--how does the JTA know that it cannot construct and maintain any needed bus shelters from its own budget (I recall reading that the JTA's budget includes some funding for the construction and maintainance of new bus shelters) and surplus without the need for assistance from billboard companies or other entities? Who really profits from this bill?

2. How is it that the city's leading newspaper could suggest that there is some sort of equivalence in the potential conflicts of interest between:

a) a councilman who voted on a bill after working for an independent agency lobbying for the bill, and;

b) councilmen who voted on a bill while being affiliated with a not-for-profit corporation that was not lobbying for or against the bill?

...that there appears to be no oversight (as in supervision) at JTA. This is an organization that will tell you it has no money to pay for bus shelter maintenance, but at the same time will pay to have lobbyists working various governing bodies to push the bus shelter advertising bill through the City Council. Keep in mind that this is an organization that cannot even tell you how many bus stops it has (the number changes with ever telling). This is an organization that will say it wants to avoid using taxpayer money to build bus shelters, but will turn around and ask the federal government for taxpayer money ($63 million, to be exact) to build a "transportation center" at the Prime Osborn. JTA can't keep its stories straight!

Now, just when it seemed that the T-U was going to help Jacksonvillians hold JTA accountable for its failures, the T-U deflects attention away from what is really important and this silly story is published on the basis of a coincidental address??? Bilbo's right - it must have been a slow news day.

Why is the Council voting on bus shelters? Doesn`t JTA control and operate the bus-transit system in the city? Why wouldn`t installation & maintenance of these shelters be included in the operating budget of JTA? If put & kept under JTA oversite - the only discussion and vote the Council needs to deal with would be the annual budget for JTA.

Scenic Florida and Scenic Jacksonville are two different organizations. Council members Bishop and Crescimbeni do not, as Ms. Mitchell asserts, have “working relationships with parties on either side” of the bus shelter issue. Scenic Florida has not been involved in any way in the Jacksonville bus shelter issue. While they have relationships with Scenic Florida, they do not have any relationships with Scenic Jacksonville or any other organization involved in the bus shelter issue.

Council President Clark wants the council members “to err on the side of caution whenever a business or organization they are personally involved with comes before the council.” Neither Mr. Bishop nor Mr. Crescimbeni is personally involved with an organization that has come before the council, as Scenic Florida has not been before the council on this issue. Council member Webb, however, is personally involved with JTA through an attorney-client relationship. JTA has come before the council on this issue. Therefore, under the council president’s reasoning, Mr. Webb should have disclosed his relationship. Comparing that relationship to the other members’ affiliation with an organization not involved in the bus shelter dispute is, to invoke the old cliché, comparing apples and oranges.